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The government of the Cayman Islands has awarded the contract for a waste P3.

A consortium, led by Disposal & Recycling Technologies (DART), was identified as the preferred bidder. Spearheaded by DECCO Ltd., which is DART's construction/development division, the bid team includes local firm Island Recycling partnered with Guernsey Recycling Group.

The bid team is also comprised of the Denmark-based company Burmeister & Wain Scandinavian Contractor (BWSC) for construction of the waste-to-energy facility. U.S.-based firm Cambridge Project Development Inc. will deal with the residual landfill component, and the international consultancy firm GHD completes the group, handling environmental and design aspects of the new facility.

The new Integrated Solid Waste Management System (ISWMS) will replace the current landfill in George Town, which is nearing the end of its life.

The system is expected to process and divert up to 95 per cent of waste from being landfilled in the future. It is to be operated as a public-private partnership, with the successful consortium awarded the contract on a "design, build, finance, operate and maintain" basis.

The new ISWMS project expected to be approximately US$538 million over the 25-year PPP arrangement.

In comparison, the operational costs of a status quo-type system of just landfilling waste on the islands, is expected to cost approximately US$418 million over a 25-year period. For the extra investment required for the ISWMS project of around US$4.8 million per year, the proposed solution will greatly reduce the landfilling of waste, as it will either be reduced, reused, recycled or recovered with the new system and the ISWMS will ultimately reduce the amount of waste going to landfill by up to 95 per cent from current landfill amounts. The ISWMS project also includes costing for the future remediation/closing of the three existing unlined landfills on the islands.

The next stage of the process is for government and the preferred bidder to finalize a number of technical, financial and legal details before the contract can be entered into. This is expected to take several months, with planning approvals sought, and an environmental impact assessment undertaken, in the meantime.

Ground-breaking is anticipated next summer for a phased implementation of the new waste management system, with the aim to have it fully operational by 2021.

The ISWMS outline business case, which recommended the public-private partnership, was produced for government by Amec Foster Wheeler and KPMG, and released in autumn 2016.

A competitive dialogue procurement process was followed for tendering of the ISWMS bids from October 2016 to May 2017. Seven companies responded to an initial pre-qualification request for the ISWMS project, and three firms qualified with the necessary technical and financial requirements to go on to the next procurement stages.